Bismuth (IPA: [ˈbɪzməθ]) is a chemical element that has the symbol Bi and atomic number 83. This heavy, brittle, white crystalline trivalent poor metal has a pink tinge and chemically resembles arsenic and antimony. Of all the metals, it is the most naturally diamagnetic, and only mercury has a lower thermal conductivity.

Bismuth compounds are used in cosmetics and in medical procedures. As the toxicity of lead has become more apparent in recent years, alloy uses for bismuth metal as a replacement for lead have become an increasing part of bismuth's commercial importance.

Notable characteristics

Bismuth is a brittle metal with a pinkish hue, often occurring in its native form with an iridescent oxide tarnish showing many refractive colors from yellow to blue. When combusted with oxygen, bismuth burns with a blue flame and its oxide forms yellow fumes. Its toxicity is much lower than that of its neighbors in the periodic table such as lead, thallium, and antimony.

No other metal is more naturally diamagnetic (as opposed to superdiamagnetic) than bismuth, and it has a high electrical resistance. Of any metal, it has the second lowest thermal conductivity and the highest Hall effect. When deposited in sufficiently thin layers on a substrate, bismuth is a semiconductor, rather than a poor metal.^[1]

Elemental bismuth is one of very few substances of which the liquid phase is denser than its solid phase (water being the best-known example). Because bismuth expands on freezing, it was long an important component of low-melting typesetting alloys, which needed to expand to fill printing molds.

While bismuth was traditionally regarded as the element with the heaviest stable isotope, it had long been suspected to be unstable on theoretical grounds. This was finally demonstrated in 2003 when researchers at the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, France, measured the alpha emission half-life of ²⁰⁹Bi to be 1.9 x 10¹⁹ years,^[2] over a billion times longer than the current estimated age of the universe. Due to its extraordinarily long half-life, for nearly all applications bismuth can be treated as if it is stable and non-radioactive. The radioactivity is of academic interest, however, because bismuth is one of few elements whose radioactivity was suspected, and indeed theoretically predicted, before being detected in the laboratory.

History

Bismuth (New Latin bisemutum from German Wismuth, perhaps from weiße Masse, "white mass") was confused in early times with tin and lead due to its resemblance to those elements. Basilius Valentinus described some of its uses in 1450. Claude François Geoffroy showed in 1753 that this metal is distinct from lead.

Artificial bismuth was commonly used in place of the actual mineral. It was made by hammering tin into thin plates, and cementing them by a mixture of white tartar, saltpeter, and arsenic, stratified in a crucible over an open fire.^[3]

Bismuth was also known to the Incas and used (along with the usual copper and tin) in a special bronze alloy for knives.^[4]

Occurrence

In the Earth's crust, bismuth is about twice as abundant as gold. It is not usually economical to mine it as a primary product. Rather, it is usually produced as a byproduct of the processing of other metal ores, especially lead, but also tungsten or other metal alloys.

The most important ores of bismuth are bismuthinite and bismite. In 2005, China was the top producer of bismuth with at least 40% world share followed by Mexico and Peru, reports the British Geological Survey.

The average price for bismuth in 2000 was US$ 7.70 per kilogram. It is relatively cheap, since like lead (but to a much lesser extent), it is radiogenic, being formed from the natural decay of uranium and thorium (specifically, by way of neptunium-237 or uranium-233).

Bismuth output in 2005

Crystals

Though virtually unseen in nature, high-purity bismuth can form distinctive hopper crystals. These colorful laboratory creations are typically sold to collectors. Bismuth is relatively nontoxic and has a low melting point just above 273°C, so crystals may be grown using a household stove, although the resulting crystals will tend to be lower quality than lab-grown crystals.

Applications

Bismuth oxychloride is sometimes used in cosmetics. Also bismuth subnitrate and bismuth subcarbonate are used in medicine. Bismuth subsalicylate (the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol) is used as an antidiarrheal and to treat some other gastro-intestinal diseases. Also, bismuth subgallate (the active ingredient in Devrom) is used as an internal deodorant to treat malodor from flatulence (or gas) and stool.

Some other current uses:

Many bismuth alloys have low melting points and are widely used for fire detection and suppression system safety devices.
Bismuth is used as an alloying agent in production of malleable irons.
A carrier for U-235 or U-233 fuel in nuclear reactors
Bismuth has also been used in solders. The fact that bismuth and many of its alloys expand slightly when they solidify make them ideal for this purpose.
Bismuth subnitrate is a component of glazes that produces an iridescent luster finish.
Bismuth telluride is an excellent thermoelectric material; it is widely used.
A replacement propellant for xenon in Hall effect thrusters
In 1997 an antibody conjugate with Bi-213, which has a 45 minute half-life, and decays with the emission of an alpha-particle, was used to treat patients with leukemia.
In 2001, Professor Barry Allen and Dr. Graeme Melville at St. George Hospital in Sydney successfully produced Bi-213 in linac experiments which involved bombarding radium with bremsstrahlung photons. This cancer research team used Bi-213 in its Targeted Alpha Therapy (TAT) program.

In the early 1990s, research began to evaluate bismuth as a nontoxic replacement for lead in various applications:

As noted above, bismuth has been used in solders; its low toxicity will be especially important for solders to be used in food processing equipment and copper water pipes.
A pigment in artist's oil paint
Ingredient in free-machining brasses for plumbing applications
Ingredient in free-cutting steels for precision machining properties
A catalyst for making acrylic fibres
In low-melting alloys used in fire detection and extinguishing systems
Ingredient in lubricating greases
Dense material for fishing sinkers
Bismuth(III) oxide, carbonate, or subnitrate in crackling microstars (dragon's eggs) in pyrotechnics
Replacement for lead in shot and bullets. The UK, U.S., and many other countries now prohibit the use of lead shot for the hunting of wetland birds, as many birds are prone to lead poisoning due to mistaken ingestion of lead (instead of small stones and grit) to aid digestion. Bismuth-tin alloy shot is one alternative that provides similar ballistic performance to lead. (Another less expensive but also poorer-performing alternative is "steel" shot, which is actually soft iron.)
Bismuth core bullets are also starting to appear for use in indoor shooting ranges, where fine particles of lead from bullets impacting the backstop can be a chronic toxic inhalant problem. Due to bismuth's crystalline nature, the bismuth bullets shatter into a non-toxic powder on impact, making recovery and recycling easy. The lack of malleability does, however, make bismuth unsuitable for use in expanding hunting bullets.
Fabrique Nationale de Herstal uses bismuth in the projectiles for its FN 303 less-lethal riot gun.

References

1. ^ Semimetal-to-semiconductor transition in bismuth thin films, C. A. Hoffman, J. R. Meyer, and F. J. Bartoli, A. Di Venere, X. J. Yi, C. L. Hou, H. C. Wang, J. B. Ketterson, and G. K. Wong, Phys. Rev. B 48, 11431 (1993) doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.48.11431
2. ^ Marcillac, Pierre de; Noël Coron, Gérard Dambier, Jacques Leblanc, and Jean-Pierre Moalic (April 2003). "Experimental detection of α-particles from the radioactive decay of natural bismuth". Nature 422: 876–878. DOI:10.1038/nature01541.
3. ^ This article incorporates content from the 1728 Cyclopaedia, a publication in the public domain. [1]
4. ^ [2]

External links

WebElements.com - Bismuth
Bismuth Statistics and Information - United States Geological Survey minerals information for bismuth
by Jan Kihle Crystal Pulling Laboratories, Norway
Bismuth breaks half-life record for alpha decay
Los Alamos National Laboratory - Bismuth

2
(Amphoteric oxide)
Electronegativity 2.33 (scale Pauling)
Ionization energies
(more) 1st: 715.6 kJmol⁻¹
2nd: 1450.5 kJmol⁻¹
3rd: 3081.
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4, 2
(amphoteric oxide)
Electronegativity 2.0 (scale Pauling)
Ionization energies 1st: 812.1 kJ/mol
Atomic radius 190 pm
Atomic radius (calc.) 135 pm
Miscellaneous
Magnetic ordering nonmagnetic
Electrical resistivity (0 C) (α) 0.
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3, 5
Electronegativity 2.05 (scale Pauling)
Ionization energies
(more) 1st: 834 kJmol⁻¹
2nd: 1594.9 kJmol⁻¹
3rd: 2440 kJmol⁻¹
Atomic radius 145 pm
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Ununpentium (IPA: /ˌjuːnʌnˈpɛntiəm/) is the temporary name of a synthetic superheavy element in the periodic table that has the temporary symbol Uup and has the atomic number 115.
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<onlyinclude> This is a list of chemical elements, sorted by name and color coded according to type of element.

Given is each element's element symbol, atomic number, atomic mass or most stable isotope, and group and period numbers on the periodic table.
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<onlyinclude> This is a list of chemical elements by symbol, including the current signification used to identify the chemical elements as recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, as well as proposed and historical signs.
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A table of chemical elements ordered by atomic number and color coded according to type of element. Given is each element's name, element symbol, group and period, Chemical series, and atomic mass (or most stable isotope).
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A group, also known as a family, is a vertical column in the periodic table of the chemical elements. There are 18 groups in the standard periodic table.

The modern explanation of the pattern of the periodic table is that the elements in a group have similar
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The trivial name poor metals (or post-transition metals) is sometimes applied to the metallic elements in the p-block of the periodic table. Their melting and boiling points are generally lower than those of the transition metals and their electronegativity higher, and they
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Periods:]] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Series Alkalis Alkaline earths Lanthanides Actinides Transition metals Poor metals Metalloids Nonmetals Halogens Noble gases
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A block of the periodic table of elements is a set of adjacent groups. The respective highest-energy electrons in each element in a block belong to the same atomic orbital type.
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The Nitrogen group elements (a.k.a. group VA) are also known as IUPAC Group 15 (formerly Group V) of the periodic table.

This group has the defining characteristic that all the component elements have 5 electrons in their outermost shell, that is 2 electrons in the s
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A period 6 element is one of the chemical elements in the sixth row (or period) of the periodic table of the elements, including the lanthanides.

These are: Chemical elements in the sixth period
Group 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
#
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The p-block of the periodic table of the elements consists of the last six groups minus helium (which is located in the s-block). In the elemental form of the p-block elements, the highest energy electron occupies a p-orbital.
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Color or colour^[1] (see spelling differences) is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue, black, etc.
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atomic mass (m_a) is the mass of an atom at rest, most often expressed in unified atomic mass units.^[1] The atomic mass may be considered to be the total mass of protons, neutrons and electrons in a single atom (when the atom is motionless).
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To help compare different orders of magnitude, the following list describes various mass levels between 10⁻³⁶ kg and 10⁵³ kg.

Factor (kg) Value Item
10⁻³⁶ 1.
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This is a list of chemical elements, sorted by relative atomic mass, or more precisely the standard atomic weights, (most stable isotope for artificial elements) and color coded according to type of element.
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electron configuration is the arrangement of electrons in an atom, molecule, or other physical structure (e.g., a crystal). Like other elementary particles, the electron is subject to the laws of quantum mechanics, and exhibits both particle-like and wave-like nature.
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Xenon (IPA: /ˈzɛnɒn, ˈziːnɒn/) is a chemical element that has the symbol Xe and atomic number 54.
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Electron

Theoretical estimates of the electron density for the first few hydrogen atom electron orbitals shown as cross-sections with color-coded probability density
Composition: Elementary particle
Family: Fermion
Group: Lepton
Generation: First
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An electron shell, also known as a main energy level, is a group of atomic orbitals with the same value of the principal quantum number n. Electron shells are made up of one or more electron subshells, or sublevels
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In the physical sciences, a phase is a set of states of a macroscopic physical system that have relatively uniform chemical composition and physical properties (i.e. density, crystal structure, index of refraction, and so forth).
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A solid object is in the states of matter characterized by resistance to deformation and changes of volume. At the microscopic scale, a solid has these properties :

The atoms or molecules that comprise the solid are packed closely together.

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In physics, density is mass m per unit volume V—how heavy something is compared to its size. A small, heavy object, such as a rock or a lump of lead, is denser than a lighter object of the same size or a larger object of the same weight, such as pieces of
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Room temperature (also referred to as ambient temperature) is a common term to denote a certain temperature within enclosed space at which human beings are accustomed.
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The melting point of a crystalline solid is the temperature range at which it changes state from solid to liquid. Although the phrase would suggest a specific temperature and is commonly and incorrectly used as such in most textbooks and literature, most crystalline compounds
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bismuth

Information about bismuth

Notable characteristics

History

Occurrence

Crystals

Applications

See also

References

External links

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